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House impeachment vote next Thursday as counsel on both sides present their cases
Updated Dec. 10, 1998
8:40 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Court TV) —The chief lawyer for the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee presented an impassioned defense of President Clinton Thursday morning, followed by the GOP's lead counsel, who calmly sifted through facts and insisted the president's statements were deliberately deceptive.
Lead Republican counsel David Schippers began by early afternoon to make the GOP case for impeachment, before lawmakers debate four articles accusing the president of perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power.
"This is not about sex or private conduct," said Schippers. "It is about multiple obstructions of justice, perjury, false and misleading statements,
witness tampering, abuses of power — all committed or orchestrated
by the president of the United States."
While Schippers' demeanor was remarkably calm, he acknowledged the serious impact of the current proceedings, portraying the impeachment decision as one between upholding the law — through impeachment — or allowing politics to control presidential power.
"God forbid that that will be your legacy," Schippers said of the latter. "The choice is yours."
However, most of Schippers' testimony was a careful combing of the facts in the Monica Lewinsky matter. He returned again and again to the issue of the president's various statements on Lewinsky, and argued that not only were Clinton's statements — in his Paula Jones deposition and in testimony to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's grand jury — not accurate, their intention was to mislead, making them both perjurious and impeachable.
"The essence of lying is in the deception, not in the words," Schippers insisted. "The president would have us believe that he was able to analyze questions as they were being asked and pick up such things as verb tense in an attempt to make his statements at least literally true."
"Neither his answer in the deposition, nor his attempt at explanation is reasonable or true," he said.
Earlier in the day, with tapes, video and sharp attacks on evidence, lead Democratic counsel Abbe Lowell built a final case against impeachment Thursday and chided Republicans for "going out of their way" to oust President Clinton.
But even as Lowell urged Republicans to give "second thoughts" to their course, Speaker Newt Gingrich moved to stage a historic impeachment debate on the House floor next Thursday.
Lowell made a multimedia presentation, playing not only excerpts of Clinton's testimony in the Paula Jones case but snippets from Linda Tripp's secret tape recordings.
"Impeachment is not a means to punish the president," Lowell said in an impassioned closing argument that included snippets of Clinton's original videotaped testimony about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
"Impeachment is not a means to send a message to our children that the president is not above the law," Lowell said. "There are better ways to do that."
Watch Abbe Lowell's clips from Clinton's Paula Jones testimony.
(10:44)
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David Schippers shows the Committee his own selections from the Jones deposition.
(1:27)
Compare Clinton's
Grand Jury Testimony
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Between presentations by chief Democratic counsel Abbe Lowell and chief Republican counsel David Schippers, the majority Republicans on the committee struck down a Democrat proposal to present Clinton with detailed allegations and allow Democrats to call witnesses to dispute them.
The vote on the proposal offered by Peter Scott, D-Va., like all substantive votes taken by the committee, followed party lines.
Draft impeachment articles accuse Clinton of "high crimes and misdemeanors" for allegedly lying under oath both before Starr's grand jury in August and during a deposition in the Paula Jones case last January.
They also allege he obstructed justice by encouraging Lewinsky to submit a false affidavit and abused the power of his office by "frivolously and corruptly" asserting executive privilege in battling Starr's investigation.
As the committee's four-month inquiry moved to a climactic final vote this weekend, the public got its first glimpse of Clinton's videotaped deposition from last January.
The first excerpt, aired by Lowell on a large television screen in the committee room, showed Clinton studying a written definition of "sexual relations" that was given him by lawyers for Jones, who was suing the president for sexual harassment.
Clinton's lawyer objected to the definition, touching off a lengthy debate between U.S. District Judge Susan Webber and the attorneys present. The president smiled briefly, then sat silently through the discussion, fidgeting occasionally.
Lowell showed the scene to bolster his argument that Clinton was "set up" by Jones' lawyers and that their contorted definition had created "havoc and confusion."
Lowell argued that the definition of "sexual relations" is highly personal. To make his point, he asked members to listen to Monica Lewinsky say on tape that, in her view, sex means intercourse.
"We didn't have sex," she said. "We fooled around."
Lowell showed clips of the president explaining his negative response when asked whether he had "sexual relations" with Monica Lewinsky. Clinton said he answered truthfully to the best of his understanding and that it was not his responsibility to help the defense by volunteering information. Clinton said Jones's lawyers could have asked more questions to refine the extent of his "inappropriate" relationship, but they did not.
Lowell also argued that Lewinsky's testimony is questionable because she didn't always tell the truth. He played a clip of Lewinsky explaining that lying was central to her family life — that everyone lied to everyone else to get what they wanted.
Republicans planned to air other portions of the testimony to build their case that Clinton intentionally lied when he denied having "sexual relations" with Lewinsky.
With his presidency facing its gravest peril, Clinton attended a ceremony today commemorating Human Rights Day and said he had learned over the year "that there is within every person a scale of justice."
"People can too easily be herded into hatred and extremism, often out of a belief that they have absolute truth and therefore are entitled to absolute power," he told the audience.
White House press secretary Joe Lockhart said he did not expect the president to make any statement on the impeachment proceedings before departing for the Middle East on Friday. But he said it was "conceivable" the president could make calls to moderate Republicans seeking to sway their votes.
Democrats are pushing a harshly worded censure resolution as an alternative to impeachment. The Judiciary Committee planned to take up that resolution after first voting on the four articles of impeachment.
Lowell scoffed at Republican comparisons between Clinton's conduct and Richard Nixon's a quarter century ago. "Calling something a Watergate offense does not make it so," he said.
Lowell said the only thing the two investigations had in common was that both began after an independent counsel sent a referral to the House. And that, he said, was where the similarities between the two cases ended.
In Watergate, he argued, the abuse of power charges against the president were so severe that both parties worked together to oust him. Lowell said the judiciary committees in the two investigations behaved in totally different ways. Moreover, he continued, Watergate special counsel Leon Jaworsky did not draw conclusions or advocate impeachment, but simply presented evidence.
And the Watergate committee held that the case against the president should be "clear and convincing whereas the current committee argues it need only prove probably cause, Lowell said.
The Democratic lawyer attacked the tactics and motives of Starr and his key witness, Tripp, arguing that "you cannot simply assume or adopt" their conclusions. Lowell argued that Republicans had not called a single fact witness and had simply taken the words of the independent counsel as "gospel."
Lowell pointed to the acquittal of former agriculture secretary Mike Espy of all counts as a cautionary tale. The judge in Espy's case threw out several of the corruption charges brought by Independent Counsel Smaltz, a fact Lowell pointed out, and the Espy jury failed to believe the others were adequately substantiated.
Lowell argued impeachment should be a last resort and he chided Republicans for "going out of their way to find reasons to impeach when our history tells us it should be the other way around."
He cited public polls showing two-thirds of Americans oppose impeachment. "They do not want to see a trial in the Senate where the issues will be sex," he said. "I hope we listen to the wisdom of the nation.
Directly challenging the four articles drafted by Republicans, Lowell said, "we should be doing better than filing charges that would be thrown out for vagueness in every court in the land."
The committee moved into the final stages of its historic inquiry as the White House and Clinton's Democratic defenders girded for the struggle on the House floor.
Sources said House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt was personally calling 31 Democrats who voted with Republicans earlier this year to authorize an open-ended impeachment inquiry to gauge their current sentiment.
Only three Democrats have publicly signaled an intention to vote to impeach the president: Reps. Ralph Hall of Texas, Virgil Goode of Virginia and Gene Taylor of Mississippi.
In addition, Democrats are struggling to find a way to force a vote on the House floor for censure — an option that would ordinarily be denied them under House rules.
As for censure, officials made it clear the proposal circulated by Judiciary Committee Democrats on Wednesday is subject to change. After consultation with moderate Republicans whose votes will be key to Clinton's future, it could be changed to include a fine, for example.
"We are open to any proposal that seeks to put this matter behind us that people in good faith bring forward that is fair," said Lockhart. "I believe that the elements of the proposal the Democrats brought forward meets those criteria."
Despite Lockhart's comments, the White House remained on the attack path, with presidential aide Gregory Craig lashing out at Republicans after listening to Schippers' presentation.
"We are disappointed and saddened that the committee majority brought this solemn constitutional process down to a level of innuendo, anger and unfair, unsubstantiated charges," he said, then turned sharply and strode back into the White House.
Just days before the historic vote, the Judiciary Committee was as polarized as ever.
When White House counsel Charles F.C. Ruff neared the end of his defense presentation Wednesday, the Republican committee staff made public the four proposed articles of impeachment that were crafted in advance.
Committee Republicans have left little doubt they would send at least one article to the full House.
In a "Dear Colleague" letter prepared for all 435 lawmakers, Gingrich said any written report approved by the committee would be available by Wednesday. The brief letter never used the word "impeachment."
Gingrich prepared the letter as Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee moved to approve up to four impeachment articles by week's end.
When the House adjourned last October, it authorized Gingrich to convene a lame-duck session, in preparation for any impeachment proceedings against Clinton.
"I am writing to inform you of the possibility that the House may need to be in session next week," Gingrich wrote House members.
"In the event that the committee reports a recommendation for consideration by the House, it is anticipated that in accordance with the rules of the House, the report would be available for members to review on Wednesday, Dec. 16, 1998, and the full House would consider the matter beginning on Thursday, Dec. 17, 1998."
Gingrich has been all but invisible since deciding to retire, and his letter offered no hint of whether Republicans would grant Democratic demands for a vote on a lesser punishment such as censure.
Nor did Gingrich say how long debate on articles of impeachment would last.
Following the presentations of the chief counsels, Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., said lawmakers would begin formal debate on the articles of impeachment he proposed Wednesday. After debates on the articles, Hyde said he would allow Democrats to present a censure resolution.
Committee Republicans have left little doubt they would send at least one article to the full House. The articles will be dissected and possibly revised before the panel votes later this week.
If the House approved an article of impeachment — which requires only a majority vote — it would be the first such act against a president since the Andrew Johnson case was sent to a Senate trial in 1868. Conviction requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate. Johnson was acquitted by a single vote.
Court TV's Aldina Vazao Kennedy, Jon Bonné and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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